15-inch Apple MacBook Air Coming Out Q1 2012

More rumours have surfaced from Taiwan regarding the potential release of a 15-inch MacBook Air laptop that will go against similar sized Ultrabooks from PC vendors such as Dell and HP.

According to Aaron Lee and Joseph Tsai from Digitimes, anonymous sources from the upstream supply chain (the guys who provide the parts), have confirmed that three new MacBook Air laptops will be released in the first quarter of 2012.

Apple is said to be mulling over plans to drop MacBook Air prices ahead of the launch of the biggest model yet, possibly in a move to reduce stocks of existing products and to increase Apple's share of the global notebook market. Digitimes notes that several retailers have seen prices for the Macbook air fall by up to $100.

Whether Apple will be able to entice a bigger share of the enterprise market remains to be seen. Ultrabooks, which are more refined and more expensive versions of Netbooks, are likely to see a steep rise in competition by mid 2012.

In addition, the release of Windows 8 for ARM will almost certainly mean that ultraportable laptops with ARM-based chipsets inside will be on the market by this time next year.